Jim Moore - The Freedom of History
It's odd to read books written by people you've met. Jim Moore was my teacher for the first class I took at Hamline in the MFA program. The Core course: Readers and Writers, Creators Both. Several of the poems in this collection were familiar to me from the class.
I don't really know what holds this thing together. Let's see:
I. TODAY'S MEDITATION - meditative poems in first, second and third person
II. THE FREEDOM OF HISTORY - a conversation with Czech woman over a number of days
III. WILD LIGHT - mostly visual; metaphorical stuff, imagining things a different way
IV. BLACK & WHITE/COLOR - poems based on visual art: black and white photos, a Matisse
V. TERROR'S ONLY EPITAPH - narrative from a first person experience surviving a bomb
VI. GIVING AWAY LOVE - sex and romance poems
VII. FOR YOU - Issues that cross borders (Vietnam, Europe, Canada, Greece, Vietnam War)
The collection begings very internally, goes outward in conversation, becomes abstract, imaginitive and visual, then returns to personal stories and once again an internal narrative.
I. TODAY'S MEDITATION - meditative poems in first, second and third person
Today's Meditation: It's Not Supposed to Last Forever - remembering being in prison
Today's Meditation: Happiness - perspective through a window (still in prison?)
Today's Meditation - dreaming well (of wild sex and secret meetings) aftermath in leaves
Today's Meditation: Travel: Ravenna - how our lives are written on our faces
Today's Meditation: A Summer Afternoon, Venice - realizing you are not the point
Today's Meditation: The Crucifixion - It is ongoing - a description of a visual image?
II. THE FREEDOM OF HISTORY - a long conversation over a number of days from P.O.V. of Czech woman
The Freedom of History - One side of discussions: American man Czech woman in Prague
III. WILD LIGHT - mostly visual; metaphorical stuff. Not sure why Details from August is in this section
Winter Smoke - visual of smoke as horses escaping into the sky
Snow - Self as snow
You and Snow - Self as snowflake
Into the Circle of Death - death as a flying horse (image from Sioux effigy)
In the Aviary - ravens as mystical
Details from the August Heat: Your Rape One Year Later - Normalcy after horror
IV. BLACK & WHITE/COLOR - poems based on visual art
A Sudek Place - on a photograph by Josef Sudek
The Valley Called Curve - Josef Sudek, photographer (1896-1976)
Here, Too, There Is a Paradise - on a photograph of Prague by Josef Sudek
Rothko - about the painter
Matisse's "Dance" - about the painting
V. TERROR'S ONLY EPITAPH - narrative from a first person experience
Terror's Only Epitaph - On surviving the bombing of La Guardia in 1975
VI. GIVING AWAY LOVE - sex and romance poems
Do See It My Way - risks of falling in love
In Rain - sex as a cat
That's the Dusk - romance of darkness
What the Bird Sees - gentle sex between consenting adults
Giving Away Love - Happy aftermath of loving while love is still asleep
London: 33, The Last Movement, the Longest Day - man panics at being 33-- relaxes at 34
VII. FOR YOU - Issues that cross borders
Fires That Won't Go Out - translplanted Vietnamese waiters in Boston
All the Raised Arms - The calm beauty and tradition of an old city and its citizens
This Passing - A man dying from cancer at 30 (longing to visit Greece in spring)
The Poet of Minsk - Taking risks as a poet (Mandelstam and others) in Minsk in 1928
Beyond the Border - Crossing the border to Canada on a bus
For You - Poetry prof. whose students die in Vietnam finds a reason to protest loudly and go to prison
Cole Swensen's poetry is not accessible to me. When I read an
interview with her I realized why...
Swensen works in ekphasic poetry-- poetry that describes visual art, often paintings. She thinks of the poems themselves as visual art and looks at the page as a canvas.
I am at the other spectrum of poetry-- wanting it to be read. Wanting it to be an auditory, musical art form. And visual art, visualization is my weak point.
I wanted to understand what the poem was ABOUT or hear the beauty in the language, not try to picture the visual that she was describing. As a prose person I wanted more narrative.
But while the poems themselves are inscrutable to me, I can still look at the organization that she uses in the manuscript.
Goest is divided into 3 named sections:
1. Of White - Poems that are definitely images.
The Girl who Never Rained
Others
Five Landscapes
The Future of Sculpture
White Cities
2. A History of the Incandescent - Poems with a lot of historical or quasi-historical information, but still largely driven by image and light.
Lacrymae Vitrae
The Invention of the Night-watch
The Invention of Streetlights
The First Lightbulb
The History of Artificial Ice
The Invention of the Hydrometer
The Invention of the Mirror
The Invention of the Weathervane
The Invention of Automata
What the Ventriloquists Said
The Origin of Ombres Chinoises
The Game of Balls and Cups
The Discovery of Bologna Stone
Things to Do with Naphtha
Of Manganese and Other Things
The Lives of Saltpeter
The Invention of Etched, Engraved and Incised Glass
The Expolration of Fluor-Spar
The Invention of the Pencil
The Development of Natural gas
3. On White - More really visual poems. A return and reworking of similar or the same material handled in the first section.
Razed Cities
The Future of White
Five Landscapes
There is something very compelling about this ABA form to the manuscript. Seeing how the thematic material is changed and transformed from the beginning to the end by the intervening section that is quite different.
So here comes the idea of not putting ALL of the thematically similar material together. Where does it belong?
I'm doing an independent study at Hamline this summer with Deborah Keenan, who is my advisor. I need to put together my poetry manuscript and so my assignment is to study how other poets put together their manuscripts.
She gave me a bunch of people and I'm starting with Elizabeth Alexander, whose first collection of poetry here just blew me away.
The manuscript's organization was especially interesting to me since she includes a lot of family poetry. I have a bunch of that too-- and am struggling with how to not make it an entier manuscript of family poetry.
The unavoidable answer to that of course is that I need to write a bunch more poems that are not family poems. Right.
The book takes its title from a poem about
Sarah Baartman, the "Venus Hottentot" who was a woman from South Africa displayed as a freak in London.
It is divided into four numbered sections:
I.
Containing "The Venus Hottentot"
II.
Containing eight poems about herself and her own family
West Indian Primer - grandfather, great grandfather, great grandmother, father
Ode - to the place she grew up
Ladders - Sisters, Neices, Aunts, Fathers
Zodiac - First kiss
The Dirt-Eaters - Great grandma
Who I Think You Are - Daddy, Grandpa, "Baba"
House Party Sonnet '66 - Brother
Nineteen - Her first summer on her own
III.
Containing 9 poems about historical artists and musicians (and one cowboy) tied together with multiple poems referencing collage artist Romare Bearden. With the exception of Frida Kahlo and Claude Monet, the figures are all African American.
Omni - Albert Murray -
Albert Murray,
Romare Bearden,
Duke Ellington,
Robeson at Rutgers -
Paul RobesonVan Der Zee -
James Van Der ZeeBearden - Romare Bearden
Deadwood Dick -
Nate LoveJohn Col -
John ColtranePainting -
Frida KahloMonet at Giverny -
Claude MonetFarewell to You - Romare Bearden,
Earl "Fatha" Hines,
Willie "the Lion" SmithIV.
Containing 11 poems that move around geographically sometimes with the author and sometimes with the news. Putting down roots, being transplanted, taking things for granted, exploring the idea of blackness.
Penmanship - differences in education from generation to generation
Letter: Blues - setting down new roots, being lonely
Boston Year - Contact with people from many different cultures in Boston
Kevin of the N.E. Crew - Graffitti, gangs and crime
Four Bongos: Take a Train - Subway musicians
"Radio Days" - Nostalgia
Miami Footnote - Visiting Miami
"Ala - Black men playing basketball in Alabama
A Poem for Nelson Mandela - Pretty self-explanatory
Today's News - Mike Tyson in a street brawl, Mohammed Ali throwing his gold medal away, the inability to define what blackness is-- too many things-- too many people
Preliminary Sketches: Philadelphia - Philadelphia as a place of roots
I'm least sure about the poems in the last set and I'm not sure why Penmanship is not included in the first section, since it mainly deals with differences between generations in her own family and isn't rooted in place, but in time.
I found this a very powerful collection of poems and will definitely re-read it and come back to this post so I can make changes to the analysis.
